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Final Fantasy XIII-2: Cancelled Environments, Areas and DLC Plans

When developing a new (Final Fantasy) game, creators often imagine many different kinds of things for their next game. From this article you can find an overview of abandoned or cancelled areas and content from FINAL FANTASY XIII-2. These new details are taken from the official FINAL FANTASY XIII-2 ULTIMANIA OMEGA book.

In the early creative process of Final Fantasy XIII-2, the developer team is creating many environments and places, but only part of them are actually included in the final game. In this article you can see many different and interesting looking illustrations or in-game screenshots of many ideas and areas which were planned for the game. However these places and ideas were never playable at any point. Like we told you in the earlier article the story was meant to be located to 900 years in the future, but in some early point of the development it was changed to the time traveling system.

Enjoy this article and never-before-seen artwork below!­

The Ruins of Eden at Lake Bresha

In this concept artwork you can see Eden, the great floating city of Cocoon, which has collapsed to Lake Bresha that lies at the bottom of crystallized Cocoon. People who has played the first game likely remember that the lake crystallized at the very beginning of it. In the background, you can see the crack in Cocoon’s shell.

The Ruins in the Oerba

In this illustration you can see the landscape of­ desertified Oerba. You may recognize those pieces of building, they are from the Cradle of Orphan, the last area of FINAL FANTASY XIII. It is not known why these remains can be found on Gran Pulse. (and not Cocoon)

Ruins of Eden on Gran Pulse

Different to the Lake Bresha version here Eden has been collapsed on Gran Pulse, at Archylte Steppe. The scene was to be in the distant future where the ancient capital of Cocoon would have been covered by different kinds of plants, flowers and other vegetation.

Archylte Steppe in the Future – The Great City of Gran Pulse

These conceptual images show, how Archylte Steppe would have looked 900 years after the ending of Final Fantasy XIII. This is a huge and great city with high buildings. You can also notice similar building to the government building of Eden background. This place would have had day and beautiful sunset versions.
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Bresha Ruins in the Future

These two images show the appearance of the ruins of Bresha from 500 (upper) and 900 (lower) years after the events of FFXIII. By the time’s passing the area wouldn’t change that much, but in AF 900 the ruins had completely submerged to the lake. Could this have been the Atlantis of Final Fantasy XIII?

Deleted Area: The Thirteenth Ark

It’s possible that some environments and areas aren’t included to the final game because the lack of time. This is what happened to the Thirteenth ark, the place which was mentioned in the story of Final Fantasy XIII-2 and is visible in the sky of Academia. The developers had planned to let the players to discover this place by themselves and nobody would have known anything about this place. They were also planning to have symbols on the ground to help players to know where they were in this maze.

The Thirteenth Ark is a monumental structure that floats in the sky of Gran Pulse. Visually,The Thirteenth Ark was supposed to make the player feel dizzy. The idea of the developers was to make Ark dungeon-like maze where players could have explore the mysteries of area.

The dungeon included mechanisms to let players move around it. The machine (above) in the Ark was supposed to allow the player to make huge jumps thanks to the power of the wind.

Cancelled Downloadable Content

FFXIII-2 is the first game in the whole saga which has downloadable content. Furthermore all the enemies, costumes and weapons, developers had also planned several additional scenarios. Each of them would have been dedicated for one character like Sazh and Lightning DLC episodes did. They had ideas for Snow and Hope episodes, but they were cancelled. Here is more info about those episodes.

Snow’s Episode

This episode was very different to the final version of Snow’s episode which is available via XBOX LIVE and PSN. Originally Snow’s episode included a motorcycle minigame through the Archylte Steppe where he would fight against monsters. (See photo above) The goal was defeat 30 monsters, and Snow’s abilities would have been spinning, drifting, jumping and water spell. The racing system was used as the base for the chocobo racing minigame in Serendipity. Those visible red balls in the bottom left of the image are the flare accelerations.

Hope’s Episode

Like we earlier told, the action would have taken place in the August Tower. Player would have had 30 minutes of time to stop Alyssa and her plan to kill Hope. This episode reminds us a bit about Dragon’s Lair. If the player responded well, the story continued, but if he answered, it was game over. With right answer player would have seen a new cutscenes and problems. The idea was repeat the mission several times to successfully complete it.

The answers to some of the common questions being asked by fans are really simple. designers are a lot like fantasy writers. Much of their job is to dream up cool options and game content. Sadly budgets have a HUGE role to play. Downloadable content is here to stay I think. But the key thing to remember is people have to buy the game and then invest in the content. I can say it is a 100% certainty if every person that bought the game went out and bought all the DLC that within a few days we would see an announcement that more content is soon to be released. Simple supply and demand. The programers wont get paid to create until the number crunchers are sure that a profit will be made.

I will agree though the concept art is impressive as sin. They could likely make a few dollars easy if they just turned them into background art for sale.

What ever happened to Taejin’s Tower and Taejin’s tower never appeared in Final Fantasy XIII-2 what ever happened to Palumpolom and Nautilus and they never Appeared in Final Fantasy XIII-2 at all and what happened to Casino Serendipity and Coliseum during the end of Final Fantasy XIII-2?

We just didn’t see the area that Taejin’s Tower was in. It probably stayed pretty much the same. Palumpolum and Nautilus were most likely destroyed in Cocoon’s fall and Serendipity is probably gone. With no time travel it’ll be impossible to get there and they always mentioned how it would only be there until the end of eternity (which we have now reached). However, there’s probably something still left to explore with the Coliseum since Snow is stuck there.

Love these artworks and screenshots. My favourite concepts were the Orphan’s Cradle ruins in Oerba and the Eden ruins on Pulse. Too bad they got scrapped. But while I do love the big city, I’m glad it wasn’t in the game ’cause that would mean it wouldn’t have been a direct sequel. DX Hope they make a similar one in XIII-3 though! (somehow, we still don’t know the exact state of the world).

the shot of eden ruins on the steppe is gorgeous is too good for being cancelled content.
i mean its a gameplay shot! they made that thing just for say
-no this isn’t going to be in the game sorry- (you can even see the detail in that scenary)
they easily could re-use that scenary in xiii-3 at the end of xiii-2 cocoon falls so maybe eden ended falling in the steppe.
the same for the orphans cradle, maybe ended falling in oerba.
crap it’s such a waste of potential.
T_T
why?! i would change the augusta tower, the waterscape, or academia 400 af for any of this xD